Then John Met Yoko, and the Rest Is a Musical

In the immortal words of Yoko Ono, "Aieeeee!" A fierce primal scream -- of the kind Ms. Ono is famous for as a performance and recording artist -- is surely the healthiest response to the agony of "Lennon," the jerry-built musical shrine that opened last night at the Broadhurst Theater.

The title character of "Lennon" is, of course, John Lennon, the onetime Beatle and (more to the purposes of this show) Ms. Ono's artistic collaborator and husband, who died nearly 25 years ago. Biographies of Lennon indicate that he was a man of corrosive intelligence, overflowing creativity, Lucullan indulgences and enough inner demons to fill a county in hell.

This drippy version of his life, written and directed with equal clunkiness by Don Scardino and featuring a Muzak-alized assortment of Lennon's non-"Beatles" songs, suggests that he was just a little lost boy looking for love in all the wrong places until he found Ms. Ono and discovered his inner adult. When his adoring fans and a hitherto tame press turned on him in the late-1960's, Lennon told a journalist that his public had never seen him clearly to begin with, that even when he was a schoolboy, those who actually knew him never "thought of me as cuddly."

Yet cuddly is how Lennon (who is portrayed by five actors) emerges here, like a pocket-size elf doll who delivers encouraging mantras of self-help and good will when you scratch his tummy. "We're all one," "Love is the answer," "Be real" -- these and other Lennonisms are projected in repeated succession on a screen before the show begins. Little that follows goes beyond such fortune-cookie wisdom.

"Lennon" is the latest in the bland crop of shows known as jukebox musicals that have been spreading over Broadway like kudzu, from the mega-hit "Mamma Mia!" (the Abba musical) to the super-flop "Good Vibrations" (Beach Boys). "Lennon" fits the jukebox mold, with its regulation lineup of perky, puppyish performers and brimming quota of recognizable songs, delivered with lots of volume and little dancing.

But unlike other recent examples of the genre, "Lennon" deals directly with the man behind its music. This makes a certain sense, since so much of Lennon's later work was self-reflective. Aided by projections (the scenic design is by John Arnone) of drawings by Lennon and photographs of the artist at different ages, the nine-member ensemble takes a synoptic slog through the life and times of its subject, annotated by autobiographical songs.

Mr. Scardino and Ms. Ono (whose name appears in large type in the credits, where she is accorded "special thanks") have said that using five actors to portray Lennon reflects the idea that the man meant different things to different people. Yet instead of making Lennon seem multifaceted and multiform, this device turns him into a one-size-fits-all alter ego to the world.

The subtext, to borrow from a Dr. Pepper commercial of years ago, is something like "I'm a Lennon/ You're a Lennon/ He's a Lennon/ She's a Lennon/ Wouldn't you like to be a Lennon too?"

And because one of the actors, the charismatic Will Chase, looks and sounds much more like Lennon than the others, your focus is magnetically pulled toward him in ways that upset the show's balance.

Stories of Lennon's substance abuse, womanizing and acts of violence are kept to a minimum. (His drug arrest for marijuana is presented as a frame-up; his use of heroin is never mentioned.) It is asserted that traumatized by the absence of stabilizing parents in his childhood -- he was born in 1940 -- Lennon devoted most of his young adulthood to trying on personae that didn't fit.

These artificial selves would seem to embrace both his notorious dalliance with Indian mysticism and his work as a member of the Beatles, biographical chapters presented with dismissive flippancy. Then, John meets Yoko, and the tone shifts to the kind of romantic earnestness usually accompanied by a thousand violins. After singing "Mind Games" with Yoko with saccharine piety, Lennon says, "Our life became our art."

This epiphany occurs well before the end of the first act. Which means the rest of the show reverently portrays the persecution (by comic-book F.B.I. agents and journalists) and deification of Lennon and Ms. Ono, up to his murder in 1980. It is worth noting that while most of the characters are played interchangeably by the ensemble, Ms. Ono is embodied by one actress only (Julie Danao-Salkan) and registers as improbably constant as the North Star.

On this Ono-centric level, "Lennon" is not without precedent. "John and Yoko: A Love Story," a 1985 television movie that had Ms. Ono's official sanction, and Ms. Ono's own musical, "New York Rock," produced Off Broadway in 1994, were similar in their emphases. But while the world may love a love story, it seems safe to say that Lennon ultimately will be remembered less as the husband of Ms. Ono than as a member of the group that changed the face of popular music.

There is little corroborative evidence for this epochal status in "Lennon." The songs' arrangements, performed by an onstage orchestra, and vocal delivery tend toward either aggressive Broadway belting or Carpenters-style schmaltz, neither of which was exactly Lennon's approach. The talented cast members, who include formidable Broadway veterans like Terrence Mann and Chuck Cooper, seldom evoke the man they are celebrating.

Mr. Chase does manage to summon both the sardonic and wistful qualities that pervaded Lennon's voice, without stooping to vulgar impersonation. Julia Murney does a lovely job with Lennon's paternal ode "Beautiful Boy," one of the few moments that is not oversold. And Marcy Harriell puts over "Woman Is the Nigger of the World" with a rafter-rattling intensity that, while not exactly Lennonesque, certainly makes an impression.

Chart-toppers like "Give Peace a Chance" and "Instant Karma" are accorded the full, painful love-in treatment à la "Hair." (Daisies are distributed during "Give Peace a Chance.") But while the songs' musical hooks may still dig into your memory, the image of the man who wrote them is likely to feel fuzzier after the show than it did before.

At the end, a clip from Mr. Lennon and Ms. Ono's video of his song "Imagine" is shown. And there before you is the real John Lennon -- lean-faced, thin-lipped, cryptic, shyly exhibitionist. It says everything about the vapid "Lennon" that your instinctive response to this complex apparition is, "Who is that man anyway, and what is he doing here?"